Why to learn Chinese characters

With the increasing amount of Chinese learners, more people choose to learn Chinese with Pinyin, not characters. The main reasons are:

   1 Pinyin is easier and similar to English letters, people don’t need to worry about memorizing a lot.

   2 Most people want to acquire Chinese language at a fast way, like the fast food ,they don’t want to be bothered by the slow pace of writing with  strokes .

   3 The majority people learn Chinese for the purpose of communicating, they think it useless for the character study.

   

Are they right?

   No.

   For beginners, it might be easy and effect to learn with Pinyin only. But for those who would like to improve their oral speaking at a intermediate level, they will have a hard time. CLE used to have many students who want to learn oral speaking only. They think they can finish everything with Pinyin. But when seeing the characters in their advanced textbooks, they seemed totally lost. Even if their teachers helped with Pinyin, they couldn’t tell the difference between “ bao zhi “ and “ bao yuan “,they have to memorize this syllable, therefore it is very difficult for them to learn and improve more and higher.

The reason is the spirit of Chinese language exists in the character part. If you understand the radicals, you will find it easy to remember the related character, e.g. 饱 抱. They share the same pronunciation radicals, but the differences exist with the meaning radicals. The Pinyin bao 3 and bao 4 doesn’t make any sense at all. The two radicals 饣and 扌tell people that they are related with food and hand action. This will help student know about more characters.

So it is clear the Chinese learners will try to understand the Chinese characters. People have the fear of learning to write characters, but you need to at least understand each character and know to read it without Pinyin. Only in this way, can you understand the structure of the character and know the differences between similar characters.